Cali Walker

Homemaker

2D Studio Art - Printmaking

The house is uniquely human in that other animals do not design, build, and cultivate these spaces with the intention of longevity, security, privacy, and ownership in the same way that people do. While no evidence is conclusive on the earliest dates of house building, it is safe to say that the conception of personal, utilitarian structure is prehistoric at least. The act of building a fort and the act of building an apartment complex comes from the same place in our genetic coding. Millions of years of human development has led us to intensifying this desire and necessity for shelter.

Because of this, I am interested in the human home as manifest in confines of the human “house.” The “home” is a nebulous concept that can be understood instinctually as whatever place someone or something has attributed the title to. The human house is a built structural entity with the express intent of providing its dweller safety and privacy. Anywhere a living thing chooses, could be a home, but you would be hard pressed to argue that a cave is a house, unless it was significantly modified. A bird’s nest is a home, but it is not a house. A beaver’s dam is not a house, it is a dam. The human house is not assembled, it is built. This distinction is important in that it calls to our attention our trait of alteration and coercion of natural elements.

The house is emblematic of human nature. The way we build houses varies and demonstrates a myriad of cultural views and ideologies as well as serving as a container for every individual’s personal experience. Houses smell like the people who live in them. They contain the weight of the objects we accrue and each house, that is also a home, paints an incredibly intricate narrative of its inhabitants. It is impossible for human beings not to define and be defined by the spaces they inhabit. We are biologically, behaviorally, and evolutionarily geared towards attributing significance to structures we construct for our existence.

As someone who believes in energy, intention, and the sentience of every object, it is for this reason that I argue that every house, and even, every man-made building, is haunted. Working within the framework that inanimate materials have a consciousness, and that energy is a transferrable message, we could say that every architectural structure has been a conversation between the material and the maker. Furthermore, every building, is to some degree a contract. When you build a house, you call upon a deeply intuitive quality intrinsic to your species, that predates science as we know it. The building knows that. The house understands what is happening. Tree’s do not mind being called shelter; they adapted this quality during a time when conversation flowed more freely. The timber understands its purpose within this context because the energy of intention has been transmitted to it since before architecture began. Wood, grassy knolls, and geologic structures were all homes before they were houses.

I believe that the wastefully large buildings that are increasingly being built in American suburbs are an affront to nature, biology, the soul, and entirely emblematic of an arrogant, and cynical species in a state of complete moral and philosophical decline. Shotty architecture is disrespectful to every living thing. The modern dry-wall structure is a gross display of the ambivalence we adopt in relation to our instincts and to the earth.

We recreate the cave for our liking and then, once again, adorn it with our narrative. The structure becomes vessel and vehicle for our desire to convey significance and interact with our environment in a tangible way. That is to say, I think that cave paintings are a conversation with the geological spirits rooted in psychic love, and from there, I would argue that building a house is like building a cave and every decoration is a petroglyph. Graffiti and vandalism left in abandoned manmade structures come from the exact same impulse to claim ownership of spaces.

This issue is also manifested socioeconomically in the way neighborhoods of varying social classes are designed and individuated. An example of this could be how fencing is used as a symbolic and literal barrier or protective force. The white picket fence acts as a symbol of domesticity and bliss in the western cultural vocabulary, as it completely subverts the practical purpose of fencing as a barrier, and instead symbolizes the need for physical protection. Landscaping works in this way as well, as aggressive coercion of plants is a decided class marker, often enforced by neighborhood organizations. The stereotypical markers of low- income home maintenance, such as laundry on the line or out-of-service appliances on the lawn, are also forms of landscaping that serve to establish ownership over a territory.

My interest in abandoned houses is specifically spurred by my own experiences with housing instability, homelessness, and neglect as a child. Because of this I developed an early obsession with the idea of home, as well as an affection for those that had been abandoned. I can now see this as a form of kinship, viewing the neglect of both a living space and a child as similarly rooted in a deep disrespect for the natural order.

I address these concepts in my work through “building” collagraph plates by using materials typically reserved for construction, to create images of houses, sometime abandoned. This assemblage process allows me to embrace my chaotic and changeable thought processes, which can be unified through the printing process. I attempt to imbue a whimsical quality in these prints, as a saddened off-shoot of the childhood ritual of drawing “dream houses.” The irregularity of collagraph allows the prints to take on petroglyph-like visual qualities, which connects these images to a pre-history. My creative process also involves reading anthropological scholarship, exploring, and documenting local structures, writing, and making within the safety of my home.

This series of work is visually and conceptually informed by folklore and horror movies about haunted houses and ghosts, who have typically experienced disrespect or injustice, especially The Blair Witch Project. I have also been influenced by Rem Koolhaas’ essay “Junkspace,” as well as the work of Ed Ruscha, and Stacy Krantz.